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BCC - Battery Charging Controller

The battery charging algorithm on the HP100LX and HP200LX
palmtop computers is not very sophisticated. Whenever charging
is enabled and you plug in the power adapter, the unit turns
on the fast charging mode, fast charges for six hours and
then switches to trickle charging. This is not very convenient
im several situations:

 - If your batteries are already fully charged, it might not
   be a good idea to fast charge them for another six hours.
 
 - If you use NiMH batteries and they are almost empty, a
   fast charge cycle of only six hours is not sufficient to
   fully charge them.

 - You always have to enable/disable charging manually if
   you have your HP attached to a power supply frequently.

BCC provides a more flexible way for charging batteries in your
HP. It lets you specify several parameters that control the
battery charging:

 Lower voltage limit:
    Whenever the voltage drops below that limit, BCC enables
    charging automatically.

 Fast charging time:
    This specifies how long the batteries should be fast
    charged.
 
 Fast charging voltage:
    When this voltage is reached, BCC will switch to trickle
    charge mode, even if the fast charging time is not reached.
    
 Charging time:
    This specifies how long the batteries should be charged
    in total (fast charge plus trickle charge time).
 
 Charging voltage:
    When this voltage is reached, BCC will stop charging, even
    if the charging time is not reached.

 Automatic shut down:
    When in this mode, BCC will automatically exit if either
    no charging is needed or charging is completed. This is
    handy when automatically starting BCC from the appointment
    book (see below).


USAGE:

BCC is NOT a TSR program. It only works when it runs and you
see it on the display. In order to run it, enter "BCC" (without
the quotes) while in DOS and press ENTER. You can also select
"BCC.EXE" in Filer and press ENTER. If you want, you can even
install it in "More Applications" (see your HP manual for
how this can be done).

Once BCC is started, you see a screen full of information 
about the current status and an environment that is similar
to the one of the built-in applications (Fn-key bar, menu bar
etc.). The upper part of the display shows the current status
(voltage, charging state and time) and the lower part shows
configuration data.

In the upper part, there are also two gauges. The upper one
displays the voltage. It starts at the voltage that is set up
as the lower voltage limit (if the voltage drops below this
value, BCC turns on charging) and ends at the voltage at which
BCC will stop charging. The area in which fast charging is
enabled is depicted by a grey bar. The current voltage is
shown as a black bar.

The lower gauge displays the charging time. It starts at zero
and ends at the time after which charging will be disabled.
The grey bar shows the time in which fast charging will be
enabled. The black bar shows the current charging time.

The meaning of the values displayed in the lower part of the
display are described above. If you press F2, a dialog box
opens and you can modify these values.

If BCC does not enable charging automatically (since the level
is high enough), you can turn it on manually by pressing F5.

You can leave BCC by pressing F10. It will automatically turn
off charging if it is enabled.


AUTOMATIC USAGE:

BCC is most useful if you set it up so that it keeps the 
battery charging level in a range that is always OK without
your intervention. You can do that the following way:

 - Start BCC manually and set up the configuration parameters
   according to your needs and your batteries.

 - Enable automatic shutdown (check the box in the configuration
   dialog box).

 - Quit BCC

 - Add an appointment to your appointment book that will
   start BCC automatically every night (see your HP manual
   if you don't know how to do that).
 
 - Plug in the power supply every night, and BCC will do the
   rest.

What will it do?: Every night, at the time you specified, it
will be launched by the appointment book. If the voltage level
is still fine, it will shutdown itself automatically after a
few seconds. If the battery level is low, it will turn on
charging, charge the batteries according to the parameters
you have set up and shuts itself down as soon as the batteries
are charged. All YOU have to do, is regularly attach the power
supply.


COPYRIGHT ETC:

BCC is freeware. Do with it whatever you want. I am, however,
not responsible for any damage that is done to your machine,
your mental health or whatever.

I want to thank to the contributors of the PAL (palmtop
application library) that builds the base for BCC.


Andreas Garzotto, August 1995
CIS: 73064,1657
Internet: garzotto@ics.uci.edu
